A poetry teacher reflects on poetry, teaching teen moms in an inner-city school, and more.

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While They Were Writing

Today was my first day of poetry class with a new group of students. As I always do, I started by asking the class to brainstorm possible benefits of writing poetry. Usually we come up with the usual suspects: Telling their stories in their own words, stress relief, practice reading and writing which will help when they take their GED exams, etc. But today’s group came up with something novel: Weight loss.

“Weight loss?” I asked. I wasn’t following.

“You know, you hold your stress in your stomach, so if poetry helps to relieve stress, you get it out of your stomach.”

That was a stretch, but hey, I’m willing to stretch. Stretching is part of any good work-out plan, so maybe that would be part of the Poetry-for-Weight-Loss program, after all.

So while students wrote their poems, I played with the idea. Here’s what I came up with:

POETRY DIET

Jenny Craig has endorsed it.

It’s the reason behind Oprah’s new svelte silhouette.

It’s the POETRY DIET!
Try it!

Put an end to stress eating, by instead putting your pencil to the page.